Written Across My Skin, a guest post by Lizzy Mason

The first time I cut myself, I’d just watched a movie in which a girl tried to commit suicide with a disposable razor. I’d considered suicide before, but that night, I broke apart my own razor. Slicing the skin on my wrist with a thin, tiny blade hurt worse than I’d expected and it only left light red scratches. I put on long sleeves and went to bed. In the morning, little evidence of my suicide attempt remained.

The next time I was depressed, I cut myself again. And then again. I still thought about killing myself, but I liked the shallow cuts that hurt, but didn’t really bleed much. Every time I looked at them, I could see that the pain I was carrying inside was real. It was tangible. It was written across my skin.

Eventually, my parents took me to a psychiatrist. But he only sat with me for five minutes before diagnosing me with depressive disorder and giving me a prescription. This wasn’t my first psychiatrist or therapist—I’d been seeing psychiatrists, social workers, and therapists for years being tested, evaluated, even hypnotized—but this was the first time I’d been put on medication. I took it sporadically and without hope. And I still cut myself. I still wanted to cut myself.

I also started drinking and doing drugs. It was another way to self-harm. Because I didn’t know how else to show that I wasn’t happy, that I wanted desperately to be accepted. I felt so ashamed of who I was, so miserable in my own skin, and getting drunk and high was just another way to prove how worthless I was. Usually, I’d cut myself when I got home.

A few weeks into my junior year of high school, my parents were waiting for me when I came home from a party. They drug tested me and, shortly after, put me in rehab. It was outpatient, four days a week after school for three hours, and I was drug tested regularly.

One of the first things the counselors in rehab asked me to do was write my drug history. Despite only using for two years, when I handed it in, it was four single-spaced, typed pages. The counselors told me no one had ever written a narrative story for them the way I had. They usually received hand-written lists on torn notebook paper.

It was the first time I’d ever written about my depression, aside from really bad poetry, and it was a way to put everything that I’d been feeling into words. Instead of carving it into my skin.

Through four months of rehab and another five months group therapy, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous meetings almost every night, I was forced to confront why I cut and drank and got high. Why I wanted to hurt myself. And I was surrounded by other people who knew exactly how I felt. I had never felt so seen.

Just like using, cutting was an addiction that I had to stop. And I had relapses. But if I cut myself, I had to admit it. I had to talk about what made me do it, why I felt the way I had, and how I felt afterward. I had to examine why I felt like hurting myself.

It’s now been more than ten years since the last time I cut myself, but I still think about doing it. Sometimes once a year, sometimes every week. But I haven’t. And that’s the important thing.

Medication has been life changing. It took me too long, but I finally accepted that I need to take antidepressants and I see my psychiatrist regularly. I pay attention when I start to feel panicked or depressed and try to work through it instead of letting it overwhelm me. And I know that sometimes I’m going to overreact anyway. Sometimes I just need to cry.And I’m open about my mental illnesses, especially with teens. I wrote about addiction in The Art of Losing, and how easily the things we love can slip away as a result of the mistakes we make, because teens especially need to see that self-harm is never truly only harmful to just one person. Drug and alcohol abuse can affect more than just the person using them.

But the story is also about accepting change, and believing that a different future is possible. Sometimes I still need that reminder too.

Meet Lizzy Mason

Photo credit: Meredith Rich

Lizzy Mason is the author of the YA novel The Art of Losing. She lives in Queens, New York, with her husband and cat in an apartment full of books. Find her online at www.LizzyMasonBooks.comand on Twitter and Instagram at @lizzymason21.

About THE ART OF LOSING by Lizzy Mason

The Art of Losing is a compelling debut that explores issues of addiction, sisterhood, and loss.

On one terrible night, 17-year-old Harley Langston’s life changes forever. At a party she discovers her boyfriend, Mike, hooking up with her younger sister, Audrey. Furious, she abandons them both. When Mike drunkenly attempts to drive Audrey home, he crashes and Audrey ends up in a coma. Now Harley is left with guilt, grief, pain and the undeniable truth that her now ex-boyfriend has a drinking problem. So it’s a surprise that she finds herself reconnecting with Raf, a neighbor and childhood friend who’s recently out of rehab and still wrestling with his own demons. At first Harley doesn’t want to get too close to him. But as her sister slowly recovers, Harley begins to see a path forward with Raf’s help that she never would have believed possible—one guided by honesty, forgiveness, and redemption.

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